First, Last, and in Between Page 15

  “That’s fine. You girls are a dime a dozen,” she said. We stared at each other, and she was right. I was easily replaceable. “I’ll see you next week,” she told me.

  She would, and I guessed I would be taking what she would give me.

  Chapter 8

  Rory

  Cal’s weathered face was creased in what I thought was confusion. His mouth moved and I pulled off my ear protection to hear him.

  “…wrong!” he was telling me emphatically.

  “Why do you talk when I have these on?” I asked. “Say again?”

  “I think it’s that little girl who was here before,” he said. I realized that he wasn’t confused; he looked worried.

  He meant that Isobel was here, because no one else had visited me at the woodshop. I didn’t want to see her. I’d spent just about every moment since I’d hung up the phone with her regretting that I’d ever found her in the first place. I was just so…

  It was hard to put a name to it. But I didn’t want to deal with her now. Ever again.

  “She’s at the door,” Cal said. “Go,” he told me, and he sounded oddly urgent. I gave him a look as I pushed back my bench.

  “All right, keep your pants on.” I took my time removing my apron and safety glasses as Cal watched me. “What’s the matter with you?” I finally asked him.

  “Somebody worked her over pretty good,” he told me.

  I got to the steel door before I knew I was running and pulled it open, almost pulled it off the building. Isobel was walking back toward her little car, her blonde hair swirling in the wild spring wind.

  “Hey!” I ran towards her, sprinted, but she stopped and waited, and then when I reached her and said her name, she turned around to face me.

  Worked her over. Yeah, somebody had. Red rage rose up in me, like a haze over my eyes, like it was filling my throat and choking me. “What in the hell happened to you?” I asked. I yelled it.

  “I’m ok,” she told me, just like she had assured me that her heart arrythmia wasn’t any big deal. “I’m ok now.”

  Her face…

  “Rory, can you let go of my arms?”

  I was gripping her, I realized, almost holding her off the ground. I let her go and she rubbed her biceps where my fingers had dug in. “Did I hurt you?” I asked. Hurt her more, I meant.

  Isobel shook her head, studying her shoes.

  “Did your boyfriend do this?” I asked. “Did he do this to you? Was it him? Kash?” I was trying to keep my voice calm but it wasn’t, because I wasn’t. The words got louder and louder until I yelled his name at the end.

  “I—” She broke off, biting her lip, still staring hard at the ground. “Does it matter? It happened, it’s done.”

  “I’m going to fucking kill him. I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.”

  Horror sufficed her battered face as she looked up at me. “Don’t say that! Don’t even think that!”

  “No, of course not,” I told her, and made a herculean effort to say it soothingly. “It was a figure of speech.”

  Isobel just kept looking at me, shaking her head. We both knew what had gotten me sent to Adrian. “I didn’t want to make you upset,” she said. “I just wanted to explain why I took those pain pills. It hurt so much and I…” She closed her eye, just the right one. The left was swollen shut. “I guess I did need the high, too. I needed to feel better.”

  I understood that. It was the need to fill something up, in a way that was easy and immediate.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I thought about you the whole night after you hung up, like if I made you want to use, too. Did I? I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  “You thought about me? You were worried about me?” I put my hands on her arms again, but very gently this time. I bet that her face wasn’t the only part of her that was hurting. “Don’t apologize.”

  “You were really angry at me.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t know what was going on.” I moved my hands to hover over her face, over the cut in her lip. He wore a ring, the son of a bitch. “How often does this happen?”

  “Not too much,” she said quickly. “It’s because—”

  “No. I don’t want to hear any reasons why this is ok.”

  A tear splashed down her cheek and she used the back of her hand to rub it away. Her hand was bruised, too. “Sure. I get it,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you sometime.”

  “Isobel.” I stepped toward her and carefully put my arms around her and it didn’t take too long before she leaned into me. And then she hung onto my t-shirt and bawled, her shoulders shaking, her whole body shaking. She told me about her day, in broken, choked words, how she’d tried her best to clean those houses when everything hurt, how the one woman had shorted her on money.

  “I can’t even do anything about it,” she said. “I can’t do anything. It all just happens to me and I can’t do anything! I just have to take it.”

  “No, you don’t. Not from her or anyone.”

  Her head came up off my chest. “What am I supposed to do? Quit? She pays better than any of my other clients and I have to have the money. Because I have my mom, and I have to deal with her, and I know she has more animals. I know it. And she’s…”

  “What?”

  Her throat moved in a swallow. “She’s having men over again. For money,” she said in a rush, and her cheeks flamed beneath the black and blue marks. “She’s always done it, but I was giving her enough that she mostly stopped. It’s so dangerous and she’s not careful, not at all. You couldn’t ever be careful enough.” She sighed. “I’m noticing more stuff around her apartment. I dropped in when she wasn’t there and I found a bottle of gin and a big pile of new nail polish. Maybe she stole it,” she concluded, and I saw that was what she hoped, that her mother was a thief and not a prostitute.

  A light rain started to fall and the wind picked up again.

  “About this,” she said, waving her hand around her face. “It’s really ok. It’s kind of an accident. I wanted to check on you and I told Rella that I would come.” Isobel looked down at her shoes. “She didn’t want you to think badly of me. It was just an accident,” she told me again.

  “An accident,” I repeated. An accident, like he couldn’t control where his fists landed on her body.

  “It’s not like it’s something that he plans,” Isobel explained. “He loses his temper, just like anyone could.” She looked at me and I knew what she was thinking: like I just had done when I’d seen her bruised face. “Anyone can be violent at times but it doesn’t mean that he’s a bad person,” she added, and I understood that, too. She meant me, again. Me, the guy who had just gotten out of prison for manslaughter.

  “I get it,” I told her, and the corner of her cracked lip went up in what might have been a smile. I did get it: her boyfriend kicked the shit out of her because he lost his temper and because he could, because she was five inches shorter and eighty pounds lighter and he knew that she couldn’t fight back. Her mother took her money and Isobel was afraid to stop giving it to her because she’d turn more tricks; the woman she cleaned for withheld what she owed and Isobel couldn’t quit going back and scraping before her because she had to get something, anything.

  I pulled gently on her arms and she put her forehead back against my chest. Instinctively, I drew her even closer. I thought about Kash and what I was going to do to him, and also about Leopold’s driver, Ronnie. I had worked him over the same way. Did that guy have anyone to help him afterwards? Had anyone given him ice and hugged him, like Rella had probably done for my girl?

  Shit.

  She picked up her head. “What?”

  “Did I say something? It’s nothing,” I told her. “Come on inside out of the rain. There’s no one here but Cal and me,” I said, as she held back.

  “He was looking at me like…” She bit her hurt lip.

  “He was worried,” I said. “You look like someone beat the hell out of you, Isobel. Becaus
e someone did.”

  Her eyes flew to my face again, and I’d heard the anger in my voice, too. “It’s raining and we should go inside,” I said, trying for the soothing tone again. “Come on.” I held out my hand and waited.

  She took it. And she walked very, very close to me, and she stayed that way inside the woodshop while I put away the apron and gathered up my stuff. Cal grabbed my arm as we walked out.

  “You going to take care of this?” he asked me.

  “I got it,” I answered. Isobel turned back to look at us.

  “He has some projects to finish up here,” Cal explained.

  “Oh, then you don’t have to leave—” she started saying, but he shook his head.

  “No, go ahead,” he told me, and pushed my back in the direction of the door.

  I followed her home, driving right behind the tin can, because she had to go there to make sure that Rella ate dinner. She hadn’t been eating right, according to Isobel, and the old lady did look frail and tired when she opened her front door. I thought she looked pretty worried, too, which went for me as well, so I put myself on a tiny, hard chair in Rella’s living room to keep an eye on things. Isobel cooked and I sat across from Rella as she dozed. There was a lot of noise from the kitchen, like someone dropping things, and some quiet swearing to go along with it, but Rella kept sleeping.

  Isobel crept back quietly several times to check on her, first removing her glasses, then tucking a yarn blanket thing around her knees, then bending close and (I thought) making sure that she was breathing.

  “You worry about her a lot,” I noted. I tried to lower my voice, but Isobel put her finger to her lips for quiet. Her hands were still shaking, I noticed.

  “Yeah, I worry about her,” she answered. “And she worries about me, too. She was so upset when she found me on her couch last night. I shouldn’t have come down here after, um, I talked to you.” Her blue eyes glanced over at where I sat in Rella’s little armchair. “You did that to me too, remember? I was really worried when I picked you up that night a few weeks ago, when somebody beat you up so badly.”

  Four somebodies, and I had my hands tied behind my back, but I didn’t say that. “You seemed mad, not worried,” I commented.

  “Like you, when you saw me today. You were so angry.”

  “I’m very, very worried too,” I told her. “I don’t want you to be with that guy. Not for one more second.”

  She made a quick movement with her head, one shake. “It’s hard for someone outside of it to understand the situation.”

  “It’s crystal clear to me,” I answered, but she was already back in the kitchen where I heard her drop something else.

  I looked over at Rella and now she had her eyes open, watching me.

  “I have to go to work,” I told her. “Everything ok here?”

  She made a face like something smelled bad. “I’ll be seeing you soon for tea,” she reminded me. “I think you and I have things to discuss.” I nodded and let myself out.

  I was already on the sidewalk when the building’s door flew back open, and Isobel came out onto the stoop. “You’re leaving? You don’t want to stay for dinner?”

  “I have to go to work. My other job.”

  “Oh.” She nodded slightly. “Will you be careful?”

  “Always,” I agreed. I turned again but hesitated. “You, too. Don’t let that guy come around.”

  “He’s working tonight,” she said.

  “And if he wasn’t? Would you be seeing him?”

  She looked at me. “I don’t know.” I watched her swallow. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I had a lot of ideas. But first, I drove the new SUV back to Leopold’s house, to collect him for yet another night out. Weekdays were reserved for his wife so he could save the weekends for his mistress. And, of course, they always went to the same place, because he had his routines. On Thursdays, it was always an old Italian restaurant in Midtown where they liked to meet friends, usually another couple, but that part varied some. I always stood nearby and smelled the delicious lasagna and tried not to grab something off a plate.

  The whole way over to the suburbs, I thought about Isobel. My instinct was to hurt Kash immediately, in a way that might have landed me back in Adrian, but I had to be more careful, to protect my brother and not mess stuff up for him. I needed to protect Isobel, too. I didn’t want to do anything that would push her away when she obviously needed me around.

  But also, obviously, Kash was going to have to get what was coming to him. I hadn’t liked what I’d done to Ronnie, the driver, but I didn’t have any kind of problem giving Kash what he deserved. I mentally mapped out how to make that happen.

  “Judy and Bernie!” Leopold crowed loudly when we walked into the restaurant, ensuring that every single eye was on him. Idiot.

  The couple already waiting at the prime table, the one that Leopold and his wife Deanna had every Thursday, looked embarrassed, pained. Neither of them seemed like they belonged in Leopold’s typical crowd, with the guy in his grey suit and the woman icy blonde and sitting like there was a pole up her ass.

  “It’s Judith and Bernard,” the woman corrected coldly as everyone sat down, and the guy, Bernie/Bernard, gave her a look so that she shut her mouth and didn’t say anything more.

  But Leopold just laughed. “Our kids are going to get married some day! I’ve known him since grade school and you since you were waiting tables at…what was the name of that place?”

  “Knockers,” Deanna answered. “It was called Knockers Lounge, and she was dancing, not waiting tables.” She smiled at the other woman, Judy/Judith.

  Leopold laughed again. “It was a long time ago,” he said to Deanna. “Judy’s cleaned up her act! You look like a million bucks,” he told his friend’s wife.

  “Judy doesn’t look like she has one-dollar bills stuck in her G-string anymore,” Deanna agreed. “I need a drink.” She snapped her fingers in the air and a waiter appeared.

  They all needed drinks. Judith was embarrassed but trying to hide it, Bernard was unhappy and also not wanting it to show, and Deanna was permanently pissed off and didn’t care who the hell knew it. Leopold was the only one totally comfortable, cracking his favorite jokes, the ones I’d already heard at least fifty times myself and I hadn’t been working for him for all that long.

  His wife had heard them too, every Thursday night at this same restaurant. She behaved as she normally did at these dinners and put away more liquor than I’d ever seen a woman consume without having to get carried out. Leopold always drank like a fish, too, and the other couple, Judith and Bernard, kept up. Bernard loosened his silver tie and the top button of his starched shirt after a few and he and Leopold started to reminisce about the old days, when it sounded like Bernie hadn’t been such an upstanding gentleman.

  Judith was the real surprise. She finished glass after glass of wine but she didn’t relax like her husband, or get louder like Leopold, or meaner like Deanna. She didn’t say much to anyone, just tossed it back like she knew what she was doing. Judith and I watched her husband slap Leopold’s back and laugh at all his bad, dirty jokes until Deanna told him to shut it. Judith watched me some, too, but I kept my eyes sweeping the restaurant and also paid attention to my phone, just in case anyone needed me. In case Isobel needed me.

  Deanna got meaner and meaner, berating the waiter over every single detail of the evening. I saw the guy spit into her soup before he brought it to the table, but I kept that to myself. After she finished her grappa at the end of the meal, she started in on him again about how he had shorted her glass, but her husband slid him a thick wad of cash to even the score. He and Bernie had moved from the old days to what they were currently up to, not talking at a volume equal to Deanna’s, but much too loud for what they were saying about their illegal activities together. I didn’t let my disgust at their bad business habits show on my face and Deanna told her husband to shut it again.

  Leopold had found his walle
t ok, but he could barely walk as he rose from the table to leave. “Help the ladies,” he slurred to me, and he and his pal Bernie put their arms around each other and stumbled out. I offered my arm to Deanna, who sniffed like something smelled bad and ignored it, telling me to kiss her ass. I’d pass. The other one, the ice-blonde, was walking ok, but she latched right onto my bicep and stood very, very close.

  “I’m feeling unsteady,” she told me, and brushed her breasts against my chest.

  I leaned back out of range and walked her toward the door, trying to move fast because Leopold was ahead of me and I didn’t even know if Ronnie had pulled up with the car. I hadn’t checked the area and I didn’t want us to stand out on the sidewalk, waiting for him.

  But the blonde, Judith, still hung on my arm, pressing against me and making me slow down. “I was watching you at dinner,” she told me.

  I had noticed that.

  “What’s your name?” she prompted, rubbing again.

  “I’m the security.”

  “I might need some personal protection,” she told me, her voice low. “Are you available?”

  I managed to get her through the restaurant’s lobby but Leopold was already out at the street, and I didn’t see any sign of Ronnie with the car.

  “What?” I asked absently. “No, I’m already employed. Can’t help you.” I pulled out my phone and texted the driver again, and he still didn’t answer. “Leopold,” I called. “Let’s wait inside.”

  He and his friend Bernie were laughing at something, leaning on each other and howling away. He didn’t pay any attention to me.

  “You might be able to take on some side jobs,” Judith continued, digging in her nails a little so that I looked down at her. It was strange how she talked, because only her mouth moved. Her face seemed kind of stuck, and was totally unemotional and impassive. The words she was saying and the way she was licking her lips, told me something very different from the frozen expression she had.

  “I don’t have time for any side jobs,” I answered her. “Leopold!” I got him to turn when I barked at him. “You should wait inside the restaurant.”